THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO PM WITH DAVID LIPSON
MONDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2023
SUBJECTS: RESCUING THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN, ISRAEL-HAMAS CONFLICT.
DAVID LIPSON, HOST: Tanya Plibersek, thanks for your time. The Irrigators Council of NSW says your plan will drive up the cost of groceries. Will this plan make the cost of living worse?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: No, it absolutely won't. And in fact, if you look at the highest year of water recovery, 2011-2012 financial year, when the Government recovered close to 500 gigalitres of water in one year, food and beverage prices actually fell by 3.2 per cent. So, it's not the sort of simple proposition that the Irrigators have been running.
There's quite a lot of scare campaign around this. And in fact, the claims of the irrigators and the Victorian Government have been pretty firmly debunked by economists including Sarah Wheeler, showing that the claims were overstated, I think is the kindest way you could describe it.
LIPSON: The cost of water, though, for farmers will go up if the Government is entering the market to buy water back, won't it? And that would be passed on to the consumers, wouldn't it?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, there are so many things that impact food and beverage prices, including what's happening with our major trading relationships, including the cost of fuel, including labour shortages, including natural disasters. People will remember when we've had cyclones, it wouldn't matter how much money you had in your wallet, you wouldn't be buying bananas. The last floods, you couldn't buy lettuce for less than $10.
So, there are many, many impacts on prices at the supermarket, including supermarkets themselves. You'll recall that there was a time when major supermarkets were trying to give consumers milk for a dollar a litre, that had a huge impact on the income of dairy farmers.
LIPSON: What about jobs? Last time there were water buybacks, there were 3261 job losses in the Southern Basin directly attributed to water recovery. How many jobs will be lost as a result of this next round?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we know that regional communities rely on food and fibre production for their economic development, they rely on tourism, they rely on other types of industry as well. And we are absolutely determined to have strong rural and regional communities. I've made it very clear that water buybacks are only a part of our delivery of the Basin Plan. We're looking at on-farm efficiency measures, off-farm efficiency measures, water saving infrastructure projects which would again reduce the need to do voluntary water purchase, land and water purchases, rules changes, all of these are contemplated by the legislation that we've got in the Parliament at the moment because we want to rely as little as possible on voluntary water purchase. But where there is voluntary water purchase, and when we do see an impact on communities, we have very, very substantial structural adjustment funding available to make sure that we do support jobs and growth in our communities.
LIPSON: But when you do lose a job in many of these small communities, it does have flow-on effects, and we saw that the last time around. Will that sort of assistance that you're offering cover the whole community or just farmers that are affected?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we'll make sure that any structural adjustment is focused on jobs and resilience in local communities. David, just one thing you need to remember, 3 million Australians rely on the Murray-Darling Basin system for their drinking water. 3 million Australians rely on these rivers for their drinking water. Of course, we've got agricultural users that rely on the river system as well, but there are whole towns that rely for their survival on water flowing through the rivers. There are other industries, including tourism and, of course, our natural environment. We've got 16 Ramsar wetlands, 35 endangered birds. 90 per cent of our native fish are gone. 90 per cent of our native fish are gone. In the last drought, we saw towns that had not a drop of water in the river for more than 400 days at a time. We saw trees that were hundreds of years old die, dry out and die. We need to make sure, as we go into another hot dry period, that we don't see these sorts of impacts again.
LIPSON: Have you modelled the potential job losses in the bush?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, of course, we're working very closely with state and territory governments, local councils and regional communities to make sure that we don't see -
LIPSON: Is that a yes or a no?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: - that we don't see the sort of impacts that you're talking about. And that's why we've set aside very significant structural adjustment funding, should it be necessary.
LIPSON: Okay, moving on. On the Israel-Gaza war, what should happen after this current temporary ceasefire?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think we're all very pleased to see a temporary ceasefire and the release of hostages with greater humanitarian access and, we hope, protection of civilian lives. The next step would be further progress to a more sustainable ceasefire. No ceasefire can be one-sided, but what we'd all like to see ultimately, I believe, is a long-term, just, and enduring peace. And that means a two-state solution.
LIPSON: Because Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will continue after this ceasefire. Is that necessary, in your view?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I'm not going to start giving a commentary. What I'll say is, I think all Australians hope that we can see a sustainable ceasefire and just and enduring peace come out of this process.
LIPSON: Tanya Plibersek, we'll leave it there. Thanks for joining us.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you so much.
END
